Nick Carbo
Typhoon Signal No. 1
This is where the typhoon starts—
inside the fourth paragraph,
ten city blocks away,
where the neurosurgeon halfs
La Celestina, where you occupy
the spot under that Tiffany lamp,
where Edgar Rice Burroughs laughs,
where sugar cane is thigh
high, where you apply lipstick,
where the address numbers
are transposed, where hearts
take on airs of Parisian avenues,
where Mexican silver coins
are exchanged for salt, where
there is no fine line between art
and pornography, where the big
gingerbread boy answers
to the name of Alfredo, where you
take that moment to adjust
to my poem, where the metaphor
escapes from your throat.
Speech Impediments
“I like dappled hats,” she said
as she lit the incendiary device.
He enjoyed her wet diphthongs
on her nape, his frequency
modulator, his frenulum.
“You must warn me,” she said
as she manipulated the milibars.
He was engulfed by the heat
of her cardamom mouth, her amplitude,
her guttural declensions.
Grammarotics
The angle of delight is best
achieved while rubbing
the pluperfect button
in tiny syllabic circles
while the glottal stop needs
firm accentual strokes
for copulative conjunction
to occur. The placement
of the preterite tense
at the entrance
of a lubricated sentence
assures the inevitable
apostophe. However,
if the apostrophe occurs
prematurely the result
is then a dangling
modifier, also
commonly known as
a pathetic fallacy.